[R] Unable to Install a package from source in Windows

Henrik Bengtsson hb at biostat.ucsf.edu
Thu Jan 9 20:04:30 CET 2014


The answer most likely is in the message:

'\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu\users$\rvaradh1\Documents'
CMD.EXE was started with the above path as the current directory.
UNC paths are not supported.  Defaulting to Windows directory.

That path starting with a \\ is a *UNC path* (a Windows thing), which
I believe install.packages() cannot install to.  If you look at the
output of:

> .libPaths()

you'll probably find that the first entry contains the above path (I
think).  I'm pretty sure there is a non-UNC path to your user home
directory, e.g. "C:\Users\rvaradh1" or just "H:", but currently the
system environment variable HOME points to
'\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu\users$\rvaradh1\", cf. Sys.getenv("HOME"),
which is used by default to set .libPaths().  However, you can control
it by setting R_LIBS or R_LIBS_USER to avoid a UNC path, cf
?.libPaths.  Also, you may want to tell your sysadm to change HOME to
a non-UNC path (which is a bit odd).

In the worst case scenario, you can try to map the UNC path to a drive
letter and change .libPaths() accordingly, e.g.

# Assuming the first lib path is the problematic one:
> path <- .libPaths()[1]
# Map to drive letter Z
> system2("net", args=c("use", "Z:", path))
# Update so that packages are installed to that directory
> .libPaths("Z:/")

Then retry to install...

If you don't understand the above, talk to your sysadm.

/Henrik


On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 8:46 AM, Ravi Varadhan <ravi.varadhan at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am using following R version:
>> version
>                _
> platform       i386-w64-mingw32
> arch           i386
> os             mingw32
> system         i386, mingw32
> status
> major          3
> minor          0.1
> year           2013
> month          05
> day            16
> svn rev        62743
> language       R
> version.string R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16)
> nickname       Good Sport
>>
>
> I was able to build the source of a package without any errors or warnings.  However, when I try to install the package, I get the following error messages.  Can someone point me to what I am doing wrong?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Ravi
>
>> install.packages("H:/Documents/computations/BB_2014.01-1.tar.gz", repos=NULL, type="source")
> Installing package into '\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu/users$/rvaradh1/Documents/R/win-library/3.0'
> (as 'lib' is unspecified)
> '\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu\users$\rvaradh1\Documents'
> CMD.EXE was started with the above path as the current directory.
> UNC paths are not supported.  Defaulting to Windows directory.
> * installing *source* package 'BB' ...
> ** R
> ** demo
> ** inst
> ** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
> ** help
> *** installing help indices
> ** building package indices
> ** installing vignettes
> ** testing if installed package can be loaded
> *** arch - i386
> Warning in library(pkg_name, lib.loc = lib, character.only = TRUE, logical.return = TRUE) :
>   there is no package called 'BB'
> Error: loading failed
> Execution halted
> *** arch - x64
> Warning in library(pkg_name, lib.loc = lib, character.only = TRUE, logical.return = TRUE) :
>   there is no package called 'BB'
> Error: loading failed
> Execution halted
> ERROR: loading failed for 'i386', 'x64'
> * removing '\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu/users$/rvaradh1/Documents/R/win-library/3.0/BB'
> * restoring previous '\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu/users$/rvaradh1/Documents/R/win-library/3.0/BB'
> Warning messages:
> 1: running command '"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-30~1.1/bin/i386/R" CMD INSTALL -l "\\homer.win.ad.jhu.edu\users$\rvaradh1\Documents\R\win-library\3.0" "H:/Documents/computations/BB_2014.01-1.tar.gz"' had status 1
> 2: In install.packages("H:/Documents/computations/BB_2014.01-1.tar.gz",  :
>   installation of package 'H:/Documents/computations/BB_2014.01-1.tar.gz' had non-zero exit status
>>
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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